by K. Webster
The drive to my apartment had passed in total silence, which had given me plenty of time to remember what ‘Superman’ had said the night before about being famous. Before I got out of the assistants car I asked whom, exactly, Mr. Wilde was. The look on his face had been priceless.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right? That was Gavin Wilde, the drummer for the Renegade Saints. How could you not recognize him?”
I was so mortified that I’m not sure that my response was even coherent. At first all I focused on was the mortification of what had happened that night, but as the days passed, my thoughts kept going back to what he’d said to me. Over and over again I’d played Gavin’s words through my head. For whatever reason, the way he had said them resonated with me and I finally realized that I had to change, and fast, before I did real damage to myself.
Mr. Intensity saved my life that night, no doubt about it. I was thankful that I never heard from or saw him again because that would have been too mortifying. Still, what he said to me about being a quitter had resonated deep within me. After my adoptive parents died and we were told by their family members that they weren’t interested in taking custody of us because we weren’t ‘really family’, my brother had held my hand tight while I cried and said one thing to me over and over: “Cooper kids don’t quit.”
More than anything else, Gavin calling me a quitter woke my ass up.
They said that what didn’t kill you would make you stronger. Whoever said that shit with a straight face should have been bitch-slapped. Lifting weights made you stronger. Drinking milk made you stronger. Being beaten to a pulp and then raped by someone that I had dated? Surprise, surprise… THAT didn’t make me any stronger. I was weak, ashamed and destroyed inside. Not to mention tired—so fucking tired. Tired of trying, tired of failing, tired of life shitting on me.
I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror because my eyes mocked me. Yes, the man that I’d dated was responsible for raping me, but didn’t I bear some responsibility? Didn’t I ignore my inner voice when it told me that something seemed off? Finding out that he hadn’t just raped me—that he had in fact been wanted for a half dozen rapes in our area—literally made me sick. I hadn’t just been dating someone who was crazy—I’d been dating a serial rapist, a psychopath. I could hardly wrap my mind around that.
I had shuffled forward every day pretending to live, but inside I was nothing. I was gone. I’d gone on for two reasons: my brother, Dillon, and my best friend, Dominique. They were all that I had left, all that I would ever have. If it weren’t for them, I’d have killed myself without giving it a second thought. But, for me, suicide wasn’t a thought that I would really entertain. Anytime I’d thought of doing something drastic for even one second, I heard the voice of Gavin Wilde in my head.
“Does anyone love or care about you?”
That question, and the answer to it, kept me going when I wanted to quit. The darkness was out there and sometimes it beckoned, but I’d turned my back on it again and again, reminding myself that I was linked to two people that needed me. I knew for certain that neither of them could have or would have survived it if I’d made that choice, because they both were in their own dark places. Dominique would have seen it as an invitation to follow, and Dillon wouldn’t have been far behind.
No, quitting life entirely wasn’t an option. Not for me, not ever. But living, really living? That was not on my agenda. I was what I had always promised myself that I wouldn’t be: a quitter.
I had survived losing the parents that adopted Dillon and me, survived years in foster care, survived the loss of my best friend to suicide and then followed that up with a walk on the wild side that almost destroyed me. But the rape… that was the knockout punch. I went down for the count that night knowing that there wasn’t going to be another round.
